“We’ve all missed live music and the joy it brings, so it’s very special to be performing again,” says York Guildhall Orchestra conductor Simon Wright
YORK Guildhall Orchestra will return to the concert stage on October 16 after the pandemic hiatus with a 7.30pm programme of operatic favourites at York Barbican.
The York musicians will be joined by Leeds Festival Chorus and soloists Jenny Stafford and Oliver Johnston to perform overtures, arias and choruses by Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Rossini, Mozart, Puccini and Verdi.
“There really is something for everyone to enjoy,” says conductor Simon Wright, who is overjoyed to be bringing classical music back to York Barbican after such a long, Covid-enforced gap.
“We’ve all missed live music and the joy it brings, so it’s very special to be performing again. As the conductor of both ensembles, York Guildhall Orchestra and Leeds Festival Chorus, it gives me great pleasure to bring them together on stage – along with our wonderful soloists – for what promises to be a fabulous concert and a celebration of live music-making.”
Tickets are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk, priced £18 for adults and £6 for children under 16/students in full-time education, plus the booking fee.
Next month’s concert will comply with York Barbican’s Covid-19 protocol to keep performers and audience members safe.
Billie Marten: Playing with a full band at Leeds Brudenell Social Club tonight
RIPON singer-songwriter Billie Marten plays Leeds Brudenell Social Club with a full band tonight, her career in full bloom with the May release of her third album, Flora Fauna.
Setting out on the road for an 18-date headline tour on September 16, she is promoting new single Liquid Love, a song accompanied by her latest video collaboration with Joe Wheatley, director of her Creature Of Mineand Human Replacementvideos.
“This is my favourite of Joe’s visual trio,” says Billie. “Initially, I wanted the video to match the swirling, translucent watery-ness of Liquid Love, something meandering and dreamlike. I’d pictured blues and pinks, ripples, skin, wet hair and a visceral picture of real life.
“In the end, I think we – me and Joe – managed just that, through the sheer power of simplicity and understatement. It paints a natural tranquillity, using the tokens of community, friendship, family, love and warmth. All those things I was craving and pining for at the time of writing. It feels incredibly real to me as the song does too, and we weren’t acting, we were living.”
Born Isabella Sophie Tweddle on May 27 1999, she released her first EP, Ribbon, under the name of Billie Marten at the age of 15 in 2014, subsequently recording two albums for Sony/Chess Club Records, 2016’s Writing Of Blues And Yellows and 2019’s Feeding Seahorses By Hand.
Building on those minimalist acoustic folk foundations, she recorded her third album, Flora Fauna, with producer Rich Cooper in only ten days after picking up a bass guitar on a whim, duly creating a more mature record constructed on a backbone of bass and rhythm.
The artwork for Billie Marten’s Flora Fauna
Shedding the timidity of her past work in favour of more urgency, Billie’s latest songs mark a period of personal independence as she learned to nurture herself and break free from toxic relationships.
Returning to nature was important to her, in the wake of her move from North Yorkshire to London. “I wasn’t really treating myself very well; it was a bit of a disruptive time. All these songs are about getting myself out of that hole; they’re quite strong affirmations,” she says.
“The name Flora Fauna is like a green bath for my eyes. If the album was a painting, it would look like flora and fauna. It encompasses every organism, every corner of Earth, and a feeling of total abundance.”
Billie, 22, has lived in London for four years. “But Ripon still has a warm place in my heart; I miss it very much, and there’s family in Harrogate and Knaresborough, but the one thing it doesn’t have is a music scene, so it’s not very practical to be based there.
“Sadly too, Ripon Grammar School didn’t have a great music department, though it did have great science and engineering departments. I did study music at GCSE level; I got a B, I think, not that great! But I grew up in a musical family, so that was my start, listening to Bowie and Kate Bush, and my father played guitar.
“Bizarrely, my first gig was on a band stand when I was 12 or 13, when I borrowed my dad’s guitar that was far too large for me, and I just sang to my dad and the ice cream van.”
“After Fiction Records heard a couple of demos, they didn’t want to change anything about my songs,” says Billie Marten
That debut EP ensued at 15, released the day before she took her Maths GCSE. “For the photo they took, I smashed a glass because I was so nervous!” she recalls.
Billie signed to Sony at 16 but her subsequent experiences on the major label left her feeling like a “very small fish in a very large pool”. “I was never going to make the music they would have wanted me to make,” she says. “You’re not pushed, but maybe nudged, musically into areas you wouldn’t want to be: somewhere where I wouldn’t be comfortable, when I was the only old-school singer-songwriter, not deep pop or R&B act.
“All those people are trained up to scout for talent, but they see artists more as vessels for gradual change, rather than seeing you as yourself. But my father always said ‘take everything with a big bucket of salt’.”
Billie took the decision to seek new pastures. “The move to Fiction Records all came about deep into the first lockdown. Essentially, we met and signed on Zoom. All a bit mad,” she recalls. “Post Sony, I didn’t think anything would happen, but after Fiction Records heard a couple of demos, they didn’t want to change anything about my songs. I just felt accepted as I am and I feel very comfortable and natural working with this label.”
Cue Flora Fauna, an album with a delightfully alliterative title. “I’m very attracted to putting words together, and within those words, that is everything in the world: flora and fauna,” says Billie. “There you must accept who you are and find a place of solace.”
Billie Marten plays Leeds Brudenell Social Club tonight (24/9/2021), supported by Conchur; doors open at 7.30pm. Box office:brudenellsocialclub.co.uk.
Ed Atkin, winner of last year’s Yorkshire’s Got Talent competition, who will perform at Sunday’s showcase
YORKSHIRE’S Got Talent – Live! is NOT a contest, more a celebration of the best of the White Rose’s young dance, comedy and music performers, at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, on Sunday.
“This weekend’s show isn’t actually a competition,” explains Nathan Lodge. “The competition happened in 2020 throughout lockdown and concluded last September last year with Edward (Ed) Atkin as the overall winner.
“During the online contest, the group on Facebook reached more than 4,000 followers and the final public vote for the winner had 1,378 votes.”
The competition was brought to life by York theatre student Hannah Wakelam, who wanted to raise money for the JoRo, where she first cut her performing teeth.
Nathan Lodge: One of the judges for last year’s contest, who will sing at Sunday’s show
“There were three judges throughout the process,” says Nathan, a West End regular and cruise-ship vocal captain, from York. “Alongside me were Amelia Urukako, owner of Upstage Academy in Ripon, and Laura Pick, from Wakefield, who’s playing Elphaba in Wicked in the West End, all of us hailing from Yorkshire.”
The overall winner was decided by a combination of the judges, a public vote and a panel of theatre industry experts: Rachel Tucker, Kerry Ellis, Natalie Paris, Matthew Croke, Nicolas McClean and Paul Taylor-Mills.
“We promised the contestants who made the top 13 – the top ten plus three judges’ wildcards – that they could do a live show, so a year later, with a couple of date changes thanks to Covid!, we’re fulfilling our promise!”
2020 contestant Sam Rippon: In Sunday’s line-up for Yorkshire’s Got Talent – Live
Yorkshire’s Got Talent – Live features eight of the top ten acts from the competition: winner Ed Atkin, fellow finalists Fladam (Florence Poskitt and Adam Sowter) and Jordan Wright, plus contestants Sam Rippon, Daisy Winbolt-Robertson, Harvey Stevens, Florence Taylor and Richard Bayton.
“The evening will feature an eclectic mix of musical theatre, opera, comedy and dance, and we promise a thoroughly entertaining show, bursting with joie de vivre, from these stars of the future,” says Nathan.
The event will be hosted by Jordan Langford, from Scarborough, who will sing too. He had a career in musical theatre before becoming a theatre creative and is soon to study for an MA in contemporary directing practice at Rose Bruford College, London.
Hannah Wakelam: York theatre student set up last year’s Yorkshire’s Got Talent contest to raise funds for the Joseph Rowntree Theatre
“Sadly, Laura Pick has a Sunday matinee schedule now in Wicked, post-Covid reopening, so she’s unable to perform with us but wishes she could,” says Nathan. “We’ll miss her!
“I’ll be performing in the evening, including singing a duet with winner Ed Atkin, who was my wildcard act to join the top ten of the competition. Just before the pandemic, I was the vocal captain performing on board M/S Color Fantasy.”
The band will be led by musical director Matthew Peter Clare on an evening when everyone will be giving their services for free. “Nobody is getting paid,” says Nathan. “Instead, all the profits from Sunday’s fundraiser will go to the Joseph Rowntree Theatre to add to the total raised by the competition last year.”
Tickets for the 7pm show are on sale on 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
The vampire strikes back: Comedy troupe Le Navet Bete in Dracula: The Bloody Truth at York Theatre Royal
DRACULA at the double, Bull’s delayed album party, a burgeoning Ripon singer-songwriter, a talent showcase, a festival for the over-fifties, a Geordie podcast couple and a quick-witted Aussie catch Charles Hutchinson’s attention.
Family friendly Dracula? Yes, really, in Le Navet Bete’s Dracula: The Bloody Truth, York Theatre Royal, tomorrow and Saturday, 7.30pm
KINGS of comedy Le Navet Bete link up with Exeter’s Northcott Theatre to sink their teeth into Dracula: The Bloody Truth, mixing slapstick and crafted comedy with a healthy dose of things going wrong.
Penned and directed by Peepolykus’s John Nicholson, this “family friendly show” journeys from the sinister Transylvanian mountains to the awkwardly charming Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby.
Esteemed Professor Abraham Van Helsing and his three idiotic actors will try frantically to expose the truth behind Bram Stoker’s notorious novel and warn audiences of the real dangers of vampires. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
What’s Mina Harker’s viewpoint? Find out in Imitating The Dog’s Dracula: The Untold Story at Leeds Playhouse
Like buses, no Dracula for ages, then two come along in quick succession: Imitating The Dog/Leeds Playhouse in Dracula: The Untold Story, Leeds Playhouse, tomorrow until October 9.
DIRECTED by Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks, this chilling new reimagining of the classic gothic vampire tale is set in the 1960s and told from Mina Harker’s viewpoint.
Unfolding on stage as a live graphic novel, Leeds company Imitating The Dog utilise cutting-edge digital technology to engage with the dark landscape of Bram Stoker’s original, injecting it with renewed energy and political insight.
Dracula: The Untold Story “flips the page on our fascination with the most enduring manifestation of evil in literature”. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
At last! Bull will hold their Covid-delayed album launch party at The Crescent tomorrow
Gig of the week in York: Bull, The Crescent, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
THIS show is York band Bull’s debut album launch gig, and no bull.
Didn’t Discover Effortless Living have the misfortune to be released in the very early days of Lockdown 1 on March 26 2020? Indeed so, but casting the pandemic hiatus to one side, it is never too late to celebrate a York band signing to a major label – EMI Records – and so here comes the long-awaited party for Tom Beer, Dan Lucas, Tom Gabbatiss and Kai West.
Cue the York-grown joys of Disco Living, Green, Bonzo Please, Loo Goo, Eugene and plenty more bangers beside.
Billie Marten: Singer-songwriter will play with a full band at Leeds Brudenell Social Club
Gig of the week outside York: Billie Marten, Leeds Brudenell Social Club, tomorrow , doors at 7.30pm
RIPON singer-songwriter Billie Marten promotes her third album, Flora Fauna, and new single Liquid Love on tour in Leeds with a full band-line-up.
Built on her minimalist acoustic folk foundations, the London-based Marten’s first album for Fiction Records is fostered around a strong backbone of bass and rhythm as she sheds past timidity in favour of greater urgency.
Flora Fauna’s songs mark a period of personal independence for Marten as she learned to nurture herself and break free from toxic relationships, and a big part of that transition was returning to nature. Box office: brudenellsocialclub.co.uk.
After last year’s competition, here comes the celebration of Yorkshire’s blossoming acts
Showcase of the week: Yorkshire’s Got Talent – Live!, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Sunday, 7pm
DANCE, comedy and a wide variety of music feature in this celebration of the best of Yorkshire’s young talent as judged by professionals and voted for by the public.
A thoroughly entertaining show bursting with joie de vivre is promised from these stars of the future in a fundraiser for the JoRo Theatre. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Chris and Rosie Ramsey: From hit podcast to York Barbican live show
Visiting Geordies of the week in York: Chris & Rosie Ramsey, Shagged. Married. Annoyed, York Barbican, Tuesday, 8pm
FOR the first time ever, loveable Geordie duo Chris and Rosie Ramsey are bringing their hit podcast live to York for one show only, moved from June 16 to September 28.
Apparently, the only way the Ramseys can have a conversation without being interrupted by a small child or ending up staring at their phones is by doing a podcast, drawing 18 million downloads.
Now, comedian and 2019 Strictly competitor Chris and Rosie discuss life, relationships, arguments, annoyances, parenting, growing up and everything in between in front of a live audience.
Learning opportunity: An IT workshop at the York 50+ Festival
Festival of the week: York 50+ Festival, Saturday until October 3
The York 50+ Festival presents more than 80 events in a “fine way to shake off the gloom of Covid and join in either in person or by sharing online with people from all over the country and abroad”.
This is the 16th annual festival organised by YOPA (York Older People’s Assembly) and a small team of volunteers, offering social events and open days, talks, walks, sport and active leisure, workshops, classes and “chatty benches”.
The full programme can be found at yorkassembly.org.uk/50-festival and copies are available in all York libraries, community centres and around the city centre, plus at the YOPA office at Spark: York and the Tourist Information Centre, Museum Street.
Tim Minchin’s back…and Tim Michin’s Back is back for the Back Encore Tour 2021 at York Barbican
Look who’s Back: Tim Michin, Back Encore Tour 2021, York Barbican, October 19, 7.30pm
TIM Minchin, Australian comedian, actor and composer, is back with a new set of dates for his Back show, taking in York Barbican.
Billed as “Old Songs, New Songs, F*** You Songs”, the set list draws on material from all corners of Minchin’s eclectic – and often iconoclastic – repertoire.
Back was first performed in Great Britain in 2019 on Minchin’s first tour over here in eight years. Last November, he released his debut solo album, Apart Together. Tickets for the Back Encore Tour 2021 show go on sale today at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Throwing a light on his guitar playing: Richard Dawson at The Crescent on Tuesday night. Pictures: Paul Rhodes
Richard Dawson and Gwenifer Raymonde, The Crescent, York, September 21
MANY were wearing a smile simply to be out enjoying live music again. Thanks to Please Please You, the musical calendar has been quietly hotting up and is now starting to hit its stride.
Support act Gwenifer Raymond is an interesting character, a Brighton-based tech director by day/guitar fiend by night. Sitting barefoot, Raymonde called her style “guitar abuse”. Others have called it “American primitive” or “old time folk”.
Pretty and delicate it wasn’t, nor was it the high and lonesome sound of one of her influences, Roscoe Holcomb. Raymond threw lots of drama into her set, running through compositions (these aren’t really songs) from her 2021 sophomore release Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain.
Barefoot guitar fiend: Gwenifer Raymond in her York debut at The Crescent
Talking afterwards, she describes how she plays from memory. It was certainly impressive, if a little samey, but an auspicious York debut performance nevertheless.
Richard Dawson was the cause of Tuesday’s show being sold out. He’s another unlikely character. His erudition might suggest a permanent chair on Loose Ends while his Bill Bailey airs, hair and comic timing could take him almost anywhere.
He is known as a formidable, uncompromising modern folk performer – like Raymonde, defiantly not pandering to a crowd. He underlined this by starting with a 12-minute a cappella account of the life of a 16th century quilt maker. Later on, his first-hand telling of seeing a child off to university showed he has lost none of his power to stop his audience dead.
There have been many changes since this reviewer last saw Dawson play at the same venue while touring his Peasant album. Fortunately, the drone instrumentals he produced in lockdown stayed away. With his last long player, Dawson showcased a pronounced shift towards a more conventional rock sound, and the single from his forthcoming LP with Circle suggests more of the same.
Formidable modern folk performer Richard Dawson and polyrhythmic drummer Andy Cheetham performing at The Crescent
Dawson is, however, one of the fortunate few whose audience expects him to lead them on a merry dance, so there were no boos or “Judas” cries. Quite the opposite, despite some of this new material being frankly a bit forgettable, those lovely words muffled in bombast, it was all lapped up by young and old alike. The wonderfully polyrhythmic drumming of Andy Cheetham kept things from metal parody.
While Joe The Quilt Maker would never trouble even the most abstruse singles charts, Black Mark or the superb Jogging could easily find a larger audience, with actual riffs and choruses – all without sacrificing Dawson’s attention to detail and wit. Jogging’s focus on anxiety brought his music squarely up to date.
Dawson was never less than entertaining. At one point, he had a reading lamp brought on as he “couldn’t see his dots” on his guitar. He claimed that he would undercut any momentum in the set, but actually it all hung together well, with a powerful finish, coming full circle to end with the more folk-based Ogre.
The audience’s smiles were broader still as they left.
Review by Paul Rhodes
Support act Gwenifer Raymond called her playing style “guitar abuse” at Tuesday’s gig
The waitresses in Waitress: Sandra Marvin’s Becky, left, Lucie Jones’s Jenna and Evie Hoskins’s Dawn
SUGAR, spice, all things nice and not so nice make up the recipe for Waitress, the all-American musical based on the late writer-director Adrienne Shelly’s minor-key 2007 film.
Flavoured with music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles and book by Jessie Nelson, the show made its West End bow in 2019 and is now doing the regional rounds on its first tour.
Like Heathers: The Musical earlier this season, Waitress has drawn a predominantly female, young, highly enthusiastic audience, out to cheer on heroine Jenna Hunterson (Lucie Jones), waitress and ace pie-maker at Joe’s Pie Diner, a drudge of a cafe off-Highway 27 in small-town Indiana.
Going nowhere in an abusive relationship with layabout, wastrel husband Earl (Tamlyn Henderson), she dreams of escape by winning a prestigious $20,000 pie contest. What a time to discover she has a bun in her own oven.
Newly arrived in town is gynaecologist Dr Pomatter (Matt Jay-Willis, busting out from boy band Busted), whose bedside manner is more akin to bumbling Mr Bean but is nevertheless most agreeably attractive, and you know where this will lead, married though they may both be, once he tastes her pies.
In other hands, other stories, the tone would be more bittersweet, more stridently feminist too, but brutish, feckless Earl stays in the wings for much of Act Two, the story instead being rich with comedic interplay, especially in the burgeoning relationships of Jenna’s fellow waitresses, one older and very self-assured, the other younger and nervous.
No-nonsense, sassy Becky (Emmerdale’s Sandra Marvin) makes out with the ponytailed grump behind the counter, Cal (Christopher D Hunt), while geeky, kooky Dawn (Evie Hoskins) discovers more than a shared love of historical re-enactments with fellow oddball Oggy (scene-stealing George Crawford, who lifts Act One just when it needs an extra ingredient).
Lorin Latarro’s choreography peaks with all three waitresses having their cherry on the cake at the same time, a climactic scene that brings the house down.
It would be misleading to suggest the savvy-humoured Waitress is too saccharine, even if the sung single-word refrain “Sugar” introduces each scene, but friendship and support, the pursuit of love, the search for joy and the quest for the perfect pie prevail over the darkness cast by Earl.
This is a musical, after all, and not a Tennessee Williams play, and so Diane Paulus’s direction is never too heavy on the salt, although always alive to the drive for female empowerment at the entertaining story’s heart.
Lucie Jones (The X Factor finalist in 2009 and Eurovision: You Decide participant in 2017) reprises her lead role from the West End, singing beautifully, especially in the signature song, She Used To Be Mine. Nelson’s book makes Jenna too sweetly accepting at first, but Jones absolutely captures the change into a woman determined to overcome adversity her way, ultimately free of male constraint.
Marvin’s Becky packs a punch, Hoskins’s Dawn is a daffy delight, and an unrecognisable Michael Starke makes a fine Midwestern gent as seen-it-all businessman and proprietor Joe.
Paulus’s direction is brisk, often as sharp as lime juice, sometimes sentimental; Bareilles’s songs have better lyrics than tunes but are delivered with energy and conviction; Scott Pask’s wheel-on set evokes the bustle of a diner and the wide expanse of Indiana beyond; and Paulus’s ensemble deliver sterling support, along with the band to the side of the stage.
Waitress’s musical pie is multi-layered, not perfectly balanced, more salted caramel than lemon zest, but certainly enjoyable.
Box office: 0113 243 0808 or at leedsheritagetheatres.com.
Six of the best for Hooray For Hollywood: Paul Laidlaw’s cast for York Musical Theatre Company’s November show at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre
YORK Musical Theatre Company will head off to Hollywood in November with a desire for escapism from months of pandemic lockdowns.
Devised by director Paul Laidlaw, Hooray For Hollywood’s celebration of songs from Tinseltown’s golden age was first performed by YMTC at the York Theatre Royal Studio in 2007.
From November 8 to 10 at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, Laidlaw’s revival of his slick and sophisticated six-hander show will explore the musical masters of the classic Hollywood of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s.
Laidlaw’s cast is made up of four women and two men: Cat Foster, Rachel Higgs, Henrietta Linnemann and Helen Spencer, joined by Richard Bayton and John Haigh.
This nostalgic, whirlwind journey through the sounds of Hollywood is packed with love songs, torch songs, and comic numbers from the bygone days of Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.
Director Laidlaw says: “We’ve actually performed the show at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre before, as well as at the Theatre Royal Studio. As we head into our 120th year next year, it felt right to be a bit nostalgic and look back at some of our original pieces that audiences loved and revive them for new audiences.
“We loved performing The World Goes ’Round [a revue of Kander and Ebb’s songbook] a few years ago, and this show has a similar feel in that it’s a small cast and is fast paced and slick but will take the audience on a magical musical journey.”
Tickets for the three 7.30pm performances cost £15, £12 for age 18 and under, at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk or on 01904 501935.
Robert Hollingworth: New musical director for University of York Choir. PIcture: Frances Marshall
ROBERT Hollingworth is the new musical director for University of York Choir, taking over from the long-standing Peter Seymour.
Peter has retired from the post after directing the choir through much of the large-scale choral repertoire for many years but will continue to direct the Yorkshire Bach Choir.
Hollingworth, who moved to York in 2012, is a member of the university’s music department and a vocal specialist, and he has a professional performing career too, leading the vocal ensemble I Fagiolini and directing the annual Stour Music Festival.
He is keen to promote female conductors and composers, hence this term’s repertoire will include Pie Jesu by French composer Lili Boulanger, alongside Faure’s Requiem and other French music.
Peter Seymour: Retiring from director’s post for University of York Choir
For a flavour of Robert’s work, his entertaining and informative Sing The Score videos, produced during lockdown, are well worth exploring at youtu.be/ie7CSrBtbD0.
Membership of University of York Choir is open to students and staff, as well as by audition to those outside the university. Rehearsals are held on Mondays in term time from 7.30pm to 9.30pm in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, Heslington, York.
Registration and auditions will be held on September 27, followed by the first rehearsal on October 4. The Faure concert is in the diary for December 1 at St Lawrence’s Church, Lawrence Street, York. For more details, contact membership secretary Catherine Duncan via university-choir@york.ac.uk.
University of York Choir performing at York Minster under Peter Seymour’s direction. Picture: Alexandru Ichim
Yoshika Colwell: Two shows for At The Mill’s residency week at Stillington Mill
AS part of At The Mill’s residency week at Stillington Mill, near York, Yoshika Colwell gives a work-in-progress performance of Invisible Mending tonight (16/9/2021).
At 8pm, the former University of York student explores creativity, knitting, the strange journey of grief and the transcendent act of swimming in the sea.
“In the summer of 2020, as a global pandemic raged, Yoshi was processing the unexpected dying and death of her beloved grandmother, Ann,” explains At The Mill programmer Alexander Wright.
“A woman of few words, Ann’s one great creative outlet was knitting. And not just any knitting. Her projects were glorious, intricate, virtuosic works of art, which still adorn the wardrobes of her nearest and dearest.
“As she reached the end of her life, Ann started a new project. Too wide for a scarf, too narrow for a jumper, this project had no end goal. She was simply using up the last of her wool.”
Yoshi now takes up this piece where Ann left off. “Like the fates who weave our destiny, like Penelope who works her wool all day and unpicks at night, and like the Lady of Shalott, who must keep weaving to remain alive, Yoshi explores what it means to pull loose threads together,” says Alexander.
“She weaves together live music, knitting, interviews, and diary entries into a tapestry that asks us what creativity is, and how it can help us as we navigate the inevitable journeys we must all take.”
Yoshi will complete her residency with Yoshika & Friends, Sunday’s 8pm concert of new music, showcasing her soul-searching debut solo EP, her first since Luuna’s 2016 EP, Moonflower. Fellow residency participants Max Barton and Jethro Cooke’s experimental outfit, Slowstepper, will perform too.
For tickets, go to: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill.
Big news! York artist Freya Horsley, right, and gallery co-director Ails McGee with Freya’s paintings Turning Tide and Liquid Light at According To McGee, York
BIG paintings, a night market, thrillers at the double, cookery chat, an anniversary celebration, a long-awaited Scottish return and a brace of comedians are the diverse focus of Charles Hutchinson’s attention.
Exhibition of the week: Freya Horsley, Contemporary Seascapes, According To McGee, York, running until October 11
ACCORDING To McGee is playing host to the biggest paintings the Tower Street gallery has ever exhibited: Liquid Light and Turning Tide, two mixed-media works on canvas by Freya Horsley.
The York artist is displaying a new series of seascape paintings depicting the Cornish, Scottish and north east coastlines.
“Her art makes you look twice because it has a calming quality and, like a good sunrise, it makes you go ‘wow!’,” says co-director Greg McGee.
York Creatives Night Market: Debut night of arts, crafts, music, food and drink at Shambles Market tomorrow
York Creatives Night Market, Shambles Market, York, tomorrow, 7pm to 10.30pm
POSTPONED at short notice on August 20, the debut York Creatives Night Market goes ahead tomorrow in a chance to browse art and products by independent traders.
Street food, drinks and music all evening are on the menu too for this free event, open to all.
The Rusty Pegs: Tenth anniversary concert at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York
Celebrating ten years on: The Rusty Pegs, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Saturday, 8pm
TEN years ago, York country band The Rusty Pegs formed, drawn from volunteers at the Monkgate theatre, who were asked to perform their debut gig there at a Raising The Roof fundraiser.
To mark a decade of making music together, the Pegs have decided to come full circle by performing an anniversary gig in the same place where it all started, this time launching the autumn season. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
No mistaking Justin Currie: Del Amitri return with Fatal Mistakes album for first York gig since 2002
Long time coming: Del Amitri, York Barbican, Saturday, 7.45pm
DEL Amitri follow up the May 28 release of their seventh studio album, Fatal Mistakes, with a return to York Barbican after a 19-year hiatus.
Justin Currie’s Glaswegian band last played there in May 2002, the year they released their last album, Can You Do Me Good?.
“It’s been nearly 20 years since we toured with a new album, lord knows what took us so long,” says Currie. “The prospect of sprinkling our set with a few choices from Fatal Mistakes fills us with the sort of excitement that, for some men of our age, might call for light medication. We think the adrenaline will see us through.” Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
No smoke without ire: Scottish comedian Daniel Sloss blows his top at York Barbican
Comedy gig of the week: Daniel Sloss: Hubris, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.30pm
SUNDAY’S gig is third time lucky for Scotsman Daniel Sloss, whose October 3 2020 and May 8 2021 visits were ruled out by the accursed Covid.
Sloss, 30, has sold out six New York solo off-Broadway seasons, appeared on American television’s Conan show ten times and toured to more than 50 countries. Now, at last, comes his new show, with special guest Kai Humphries.
Look out for Sloss’s book, Everyone You Hate Is Going To Die (And Other Comforting Thoughts On Family, Friends, Sex, Love, And More Things That Ruin Your Life), from October 12. For tickets for Sunday, go to: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
What’s cooking? Cookbook writer Yotam Ottolenghi finds flavour at York Theatre Royal on Tuesday
Flavour of the month: Yotam Ottolenghi, A Life In Flavour, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday, 7.30pm
CHEF, restaurateur and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi reflects on A Life In Flavour, provides cooking inspiration and signs copies of his “flavour-forward, vegetable-based” cookbook, Ottolenghi Flavour, after the show on Tuesday.
West Jerusalem-born Ottolenghi will be discussing the tastes, ingredients and flavours that excite him and how he has created a career from cooking.
Expect “unique insights into how flavour is dialled up and why it works, from basic pairings fundamental to taste, to cooking methods that elevate ingredients to great heights”. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Dane Baptiste: Comedian with a chip on his shoulder at Burning Duck Comedy Club
The other comedy gig of the week: Burning Duck Comedy Club presents Dane Baptiste: The Chocolate Chip, The Crescent, York, September 23, 7.30pm
IN his own words, Dane Baptiste is now a “grown ass black man, too old to be concerned with chicken or trainers, too young to be considered a peer of Trevor McDonald”.
Has he got a chip on his shoulder? “Yes. A chocolate one,” says Baptiste, a south east London stand-up who once worked in media sales.
Noted for his boldly provocative material, he hosts the podcasts Dane Baptiste Questions Everything and Quotas Full. Box office: thecrescentyork.com/events.
The Rowntree Players’ poster for next week’s production of Agatha Christie’s Spider’s Web
Web of the week: Rowntree Players in Agatha Christie’s Spider’s Web, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, September 23 to 25, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee
DIPLOMAT’S wife Clarissa is adept at spinning tales of adventure, but when a murder takes place in her drawing room, she finds live drama much harder to cope with in Rowntree Players’ autumn return, directed by Howard Ella.
Desperate to dispose of the body before her husband arrives with an important politician, she enlists the help of her guests.
In a conscious parody of the detective thriller, Christie’s Spider’s Web delivers suspense and humour in equal measure in an intricate plot of murder, police detection, hidden doorways and secret drawers. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
In the chair: Just Some Theatre in rehearsal for The Killer Question, heading to Theatre@41, Monkgate, York
Mystery of the week ahead: Just Some Theatre in The Killer Question, Theatre@41 Monkgate, York, September 25, 7.30pm
THE Silence Of The Lambs meets Last Of The Summer Wine in Dave Payne’s dark comedy thriller The Killer Question, marking the York debut of Manchester company Just Some Theatre.
Did The Chair game show champion Walter Crump’s obsession with death ultimately lead to his own? Inspector Black believes so, and now Crump’s dopey widow, Margaret, finds herself accused of her husband’s murder.
Faced by more than one deadly twist in the tale, can Inspector Black solve the mystery? Will Margaret be home in time for Countryfile? Just as important, which actor – Peter Stone, Jake Urry or Jordan Moore – will play which character? The audience decides. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
